Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Trump’s Disintegration Means It’s Not Just Safe to Vote Green, It’s Mandatory
20 Oct 2016
🖨️ Print Article

A BAR radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

Hillary’s most potent argument among most people isn’t her own record, positions or abilities. It’s the proclaimed need to keep her opponent Donald Trump out of the White House. It’s only this need to prevent a disastrous President Trump that keeps many leftists and progressives in Hillary’s big stinking tent. But the self destruction of the Trump campaign frees them from worry that they might throw the election to the Donald, and opens up the possibility that millions can finally vote their hopes, not their fears.

Trump’s Disintegration Means It’s Not Just Safe to Vote Green, It’s Mandatory

A BAR radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

The election is more than two weeks away but the outcome isn’t the least bit in doubt. Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. It’s high time for leftists, so-called progressives and generally sensible people to reconcile themselves to this fact.

The Trump candidacy has shot itself in both feet again and again. Scores of high profile Republican officeholders have deserted their party’s nominee. Donald Trump has failed to rally the section of America’s ruling elite that traditionally backs Republicans seeking high office. Millions in donations one that percenters usually invest in a Republican presidential candidate are finding their way to Hillary, who has opened up a double digit lead in the polls. So many Republican voters are staying home or casting their ballots for Hillary that Democrats may carry some states like Georgia which are normally well out of their reach, and Democrats expect to gain control of the US Senate.

The Donald is certainly a racist demagogue, a thief, liar, a hyper-entitled sexual predator and a loathsome buffoon. But he’ll never be president. Since Trump will in fact never be president, speculations on what kind of neanderthals the imaginary President Trump might appoint to the EPA or the Supreme Court, nightmares about how many millions he’d deport, how high a wall the pretend president might build, or who the imaginary President Trump would jail, drone or nuke after a 3AM Twitter fit are not frightening possibilities we need to take urgent action to avoid. They are bogeyman stories, make-believe, bad science fiction without the science.

If there was ever a need to unite to prevent a President Trump that need is over because the make-believe President Trump has prevented himself. Trump’s definitive meltdown and the temporary or permanent near destruction of the Republican party locks down a runaway victory for Hillary Clinton. It’s a new day, an historic opportunity which opens the way for even the most cautious among us to vote our hopes, not our fears.

Now the Henry Giroux’s of the world who claim voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka, the only peace, jobs and justice candidates will lead straight to President Trump and “concentration camps” can stop hyperventilating. The Angela Davis types can reconsider whether those who don’t share their fears of the imaginary President Trump are “narcissists,” and the Hillary shills who claim voting for third parties is “white privilege” can just go away.

Since Hillary Clinton has a double digit lead in the polls, she doesn’t need the votes of so-called left and progressive activists. But those activists have their own needs. They need to build their own political home, their own political party. Right now Stein and Baraka are running at four and five percent in nationwide polls, even though restrictive ballot access laws banned Green candidates from the ballot in four states, and forced them to run as “independents” with no party affiliation in seven or eight more.

If Stein and Baraka get five percent of the vote in November, ballot access for Greens will be a done deal in most states, and the possibility of additional federal campaign funds in presidential years opens as well. So the only ways for left and progressive activists to waste their votes is to stay home, or to give them to Hillary. The only place where your vote matters this year is with the Green Party.

For Black Agenda Report, I’m Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a co-chair of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20161020-bd-new-day.mp3

More Stories


  • Blacks Should Aim for – and Seek to Understand -- the Stars
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Blacks Should Aim for – and Seek to Understand -- the Stars
    21 Sep 2020
    “We all have the right to know the universe,” said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Theoretical Physicist and Feminist Theorist at the University of New Hampshire and author of the
  • Black Lesbian Intellectuals Shined Light on HIV/AIDS Epidemic
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Lesbian Intellectuals Shined Light on HIV/AIDS Epidemic
    21 Sep 2020
    In the wake of the HIV-AIDS epidemic of a generation ago, Black intellectuals argued that “until we eliminate structural inequalities, we’re not going to eliminate the health disparities in medicin
  • Reparations and Anti-Police Torture Demands Produced Results in Chicago
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Reparations and Anti-Police Torture Demands Produced Results in Chicago
    21 Sep 2020
    The young Black people that charged the US government with genocide at a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2014 helped set the stage for local legislation “for some form of apology and repara
  • The Great White Heist
    Michael Harriot
    The Great White Heist
    16 Sep 2020
    Just because enslaving and stealing labor from Black people was perfectly legal prior to 1868, America should not get to ignore descendants of the people who supplied this nation with 246 years of
  • Freedom Rider: Democrats’ Climate Change Lies
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Democrats’ Climate Change Lies
    16 Sep 2020
    The Republicans lie about the harm they do to the planet, and the Democrats lie and pretend they’re not doing the very same things.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us